On this thirteenth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, thousands of people will be remembering the firefighters who lost their lives in the tragedy. Among them, three pompiers from the Parisian region are in New York to pay homage to their fallen American colleagues.
Sébastien Fremont, Marc Bidard and Stéphane Ceccaldi, are participating in a gathering to honor Brooklyn’s Squad 1, which lost half its men in the Twin Towers, before heading to the Fire Department of New York headquarters for another ceremony.
“Tomorrow, there could be attacks in Paris or elsewhere. It’s normal to come support your colleagues. We’re putting ourselves in their shoes,” explains Fremont, who has traveled here since 2002 as a representative of the FDNY-SP78 solidarity organization.
This year, Fremont is bringing a book he co-wrote about New York firefighters. With 300 photos of FDNY personnel in their Randall’s Island training center, fire houses and in burning buildings, Pompiers de New York aims to show the day-to-day life of the “heroes of September 11.”
Fremont took certain pictures, but others come from photographer Ester Hovarth, who covers the FDNY, and the department’s own photo unit, which photographs the most spectacular fires. “It’s the biggest fire department in the world. It has become the most emblematic,” says Fremont, “We wanted to show their daily life.”
